“I guess. Sometimes.”

“You poor kid. What do you tell ’em?”

“I tell ’em to fuck off.”

“Hey. Watch your language.”

“That’s what I tell ’em. You asked.”

“And do you have to fight?”

“Not much. Just sometimes when they call me something.”

“What?”

“Something. Never mind, Dad.”

“Tell me what they call you.”

“Nigger Nellie.”

“Huh. Nice kids.”

“They’re just kids, Dad. They don’t mean anything. Jill says ignore them, they’re ignorant.”

“And do they kid you about Jill?”

The boy turns his face away altogether. His hair covers his neck, yet even from the back he would not be mistaken for a girl: the angles in the shoulders, the lack of brushing in the hair. The choked voice is manly: “I don’t want to talk about it anymore; Dad.”

“O.K. Thanks. Hey. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you have to live in the mess we all make.”

The choked voice exclaims, “Gee I wish Mom would come back! I know it can’t happen, but I wish it.” Nelson thumps the back of the kitchen chair and then rests his forehead where his fist struck; Rabbit ruffles his hair, helplessly, on his way past, to the refrigerator to get a beer.

The nights close in earlier now. After the six-o’clock news there is darkness. Rabbit says to Skeeter, “I met another veteran from Vietnam today.”

“Shit, the world’s filling up with Nam veterans so fast there won’t be nobody else soon, right? Never forget, got into a lighthouse up near Tuy Hoa, white walls all over, everybody been there one time or another and done their drawings. Well, what blew my mind, absolutely, was somebody, Charlie or the unfriendlies, Arvin never been near this place till we handed it to ’em, somebody on that other side had done a whole wall’s worth of Uncle Ho himself, Uncle Ho being buggered, Uncle Ho shitting skulls, Uncle Ho doing this and that, it was downright disrespectful, right? And I says to myself, those poor dinks being screwed the same as us, we is all in the grip of crazy old men thinkin’ they can still make history happen. History isn’t going to happen any more, Chuck.”

“What is going to happen?” Nelson asks.

“A bad mess,” Skeeter answers, “then, most probably, Me.”

Nelson’s eyes seek his father’s, as they do now when Skeeter’s craziness shows. “Dad, shouldn’t we wake up Jill?”

Harry is into his second beer and his first joint; his stockinged feet are up on the cobbler’s bench. “Why? Let her sleep. Don’t be so uptight.”

“No suh,” Skeeter says, “the boy has a good plan there, where is that fucking little Jill? I do feel horny.”

Nelson asks, “What’s horny?”

“Horny is what I feel,” Skeeter answers. “Babychuck, go drag down that no-good cunt. Tell her the menfolk needs their vittles.”

“Dad—”

“Come on, Nellie, quit nagging. Do what he asks. Don’t you have any homework? Do it upstairs, this is a grown-up evening.”

When Nelson is gone, Rabbit can breathe. “Skeeter, one thing I don’t understand, how do you feel about the Cong? I mean are they right, or wrong, or what?”